“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
The investment philosophy practiced by Warren Buffett calls for investors to take a long-term horizon when making an investment, such as a decade-long holding period (or even longer), and reconsider making the investment in the first place if unable to envision holding the stock for at least five years. Today, we look at how such a long-term strategy would have done for investors in 3M Co (NYSE: MMM) back in 2015, holding through to today.
| Start date: | 10/08/2015 |
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| End date: | 10/07/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $124.98 | ||||
| End price/share: | $155.33 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 80.01 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 111.63 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $43.28 | ||||
| Total return: | 73.40% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 5.66% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $17,347.51 | ||||
The above analysis shows the decade-long investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 5.66%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $17,347.51 today (as of 10/07/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 73.40% (something to think about: how might MMM shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Beyond share price change, another component of MMM’s total return these past 10 years has been the payment by 3M Co of $43.28/share in dividends to shareholders. Automatic reinvestment of dividends can be a wonderful way to compound returns, and for the above calculations we presume that dividends are reinvested into additional shares of stock. (For the purpose of these calcuations, the closing price on ex-date is used).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 2.92/share, we calculate that MMM has a current yield of approximately 1.88%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.92 against the original $124.98/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.50%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“A 10% decline in the market is fairly common, it happens about once a year. Investors who realize this are less likely to sell in a panic, and more likely to remain invested, benefitting from the wealthbuilding power of stocks.” — Christopher Davis
